Geo

Kudos on the video, biliousfrog. Someone should send him a link to this thread. Of course there's nothing wrong with building a piece of crap--I've done that many times. It's his attitude and apparent cover-up that are annoying.

Here's an update... My custom truss rod from LMI came, along with some bloodwood. Wow, that stuff is hard and splintery. It's beautiful, though, and the smell reminds me of chocolate. Since the truss rod arrived, I was able to cut the channel, after which I could start carving the neck. neck carving: http://i134.photobucket.com/albums/q119/Ge...orestuff001.jpg http://i134.photobucket.com/albums/q119/Ge...orestuff002.jpg headstock: http://i134.photobucket.com/albums/q119/Ge...orestuff005.jpg neck carve finished, some sanding done: http://i134.photobucket.com/albums/q119/Ge...orestuff006.jpg mock-up of parts: http://i134.photobucket.com/albums/q119/Ge...orestuff004.jpg I'm really excited. I can't wait to see the bloodwood fingerboard against the maple neck, with the body stained translucent black.

I think we all prefer face-to-face instruction. On the web, that's what a forum is. You can ask a precise question and expect answers. It's about helping people, not flaming someone who's trying to learn how to use a tool. I post on an amp forum. I am fairly knowledgeable about tube amps. I enjoy helping a beginner there if I can. If I can't, I don't post a reply. "what are you captain of the enterprise" That kind of language usually isn't found in civil discussions...

Sweet design. For the headstock, I'm seeing something that swings down like a Strat headstock. I really like rubber chicken's idea with angling the headstock back. Maybe you could throw one or two tuners on the bottom half. I think the tear drop is just begging for a 6-to-a-side headstock--but in a shape that compliments the teardrop. Whatever you do, it'll be sweet.

I just did my first carved top. Don't stress out--mine was easier than I expected.

Thanks for the replies everyone. Yeah, I may not attempt that quite yet. I've done okay so far using sandpaper to get the radius. If I had a power planer, I could probably just run it through that... but my power tools are limited to hand drill, jigsaw, table saw, and router. I wish LMI would just sell the blanks at 1/4", or something closer. Does anyone know of an application where you would want a board thicker? I guess a many-stringed bass with a wide fingerboard and a smaller radius might need the fingerboard thicker in the middle.

Wow, thanks. I might have to try something like that.

Crapola, I JUST put in an order this morning! Hopefully it's not too late and I can add that. Does anyone think something similar could be found at a hardware store? Thanks for the reply.

Thanks--good idea. For the tape, do you use the thin, clear stuff, like Scotch tape, or something more substantial?

I would be afraid of sanding the slot wider towards the top than the bottom. Probably not a good plan.

Did anyone else notice the unevenness of the neck carve? I mean, I'm a beginner, make a lot of mistakes, etc. But I wouldn't put up a video of a build that had a neck with dips in the back/side. Or is that how it's s'posed to be? The fact that he won't put up a video of the ACTUAL INSTRUMENT in use--that clinches it. Okay, I don't play bass, but I'm building myself a bass for the heck of it. I would put up a vid of myself at least TRYING to play...

LMI sells their fingerboard blanks at 5/16" thick. Rather than sand by hand for hours, I'd like to take some of this off quickly. Could I take off the excess, i.e. nearly down to 1/4", with a router? (Assuming I could come up with a safe way to secure the blank). I wouldn't expect the result to be uniform, so I would leave some to take out with 80-grit sandpaper and then start the actual sanding. (I don't plane FB blanks--my planes chatter on super-hard woods.) Any thoughts? Thanks.

Looks great. Any pics of the whole neck, neck carve, fingerboard? Those are my favorite guitar-parts aesthetically... Beautiful jade tuners.

Interesting. Thanks for explaining--I hadn't heard that before.

Then it's not adviseable to leave out right?? It's not necessary. The usual practice is to connect a 100ohm resistor to each leg of the heater winding and ground the resistors. If the amp is grounded properly, it will be quiet. The 35v supply and the method I described do the same thing--reference each half of the heater supply to a stable point. Just as a note--one amp I built has heaters with 2x100ohm to ground and is dead quiet until you get up past 3 o'clock. After that, the noise you hear is unavoidable because the amp is single-ended. "if i wanted to add a whole tone stack, i could replace the tone pot with a more complicated one (thre pots like marshall or fender do?) " Yes. You'd do better to treat the tone control AND volume control as a unit and replace it with a Fender-style tone stack and volume (for example in something like this) http://schematicheaven.com/fenderamps/prin...gz34_aa1164.pdf If you want a mid control, replace the 6.8k that connects the tone stack to ground with a pot, something like 10k-50k. Note that the Fender tone stack has a big gain loss. You can reduce this by increasing the size of the mid pot/resistor, but either way the Fender stack will lessen the overall gain in the preamp. That's probably not an issue, though, since this is a stand-alone preamp and not a preamp inside a complete amplifier. It will still provide plenty of voltage gain to the input of your amp, though it may not produce "hi-gain distortion" on its own. You might want to add another 12AX7 if that's what you're looking for. But that gets into other things (you have to cut the signal back down between each triode stage). "and also have a second master volume where you suggest to cut the preamp, after c6 right??" Yes, add a 1meg pot AFTER the capacitator. "Also, it seems sensible to me that an external preamp input could be added after c6 before the master volume to use an external preamp (like my gt-8) and use only the power amp." That should work. For EL84's in the poweramp, I don't think you'd need more than 10v of drive out of the phase inverter, and I believe that type of phase inverter provides a gain of 25, so you would want 0.4v output from the preamp to drive the poweramp to full output. That's all off the top of my head, probably wrong. "for now i've settled on the better documented valve junior for a first contact with poweramps." Probably a good plan... but poweramps aren't any more difficult than preamps. "in this one, would the break point between the preamp and poweramp stage be after c3?? the second valve stage looks to me like the phase inverter of the previous, am i right??" Yes. Your second schematic has a preamp identical or very close to the first one (just a better-drawn schematic in the first one). If this doesn't make sense, I can draw you a schematic or two.

It's also confusing because they take the output of U2/1 after the 9.1k, apparently to try and balance the two outputs of the phase inverter. If you're just building a preamp, leave out the phase inverter and attach your output jack after C6. The input jack looks strange. I don't know why they used a stereo switching jack. The power supply is also puzzling. What's with that extra feed from point A? I guess they want a DC voltage to reference the heaters? Seems awfully complicated. If you're just building the preamp section, you can use a much simpler power supply.

I've heard this explained: your body is an antenna that focuses noise. The guitar pickups up this noise. Grounding yourself to the amp/guitar ground (normally by touching the grounded bridge/strings), you turn off the antenna that is your body. Just elaborating on what Swedish Luthier said.

I would carefully file/sand those offending frets a little lower. You may have to "ramp" the last few frets down to the end of the fingerboard. That's just my initial assessment--I have no experience in that area, so take it with a grain of salt.

The purple looks cool. If you choose the green, I would try to make it more intense. Maybe it's the lighting/screen/etc., but the green shade just looks "dull" on that oak.

I just sanded the radius by eyeball with a flat block. I.e., till it looks right. Of course, that was with a hardtail bridge with height-adjustable saddles (not a tune-o-matic).

"man, I am having a hard time with all the inches and fraction stuff" This may be helpful... use millimeters for scale length and fret distances. This fret calculator is helpful. http://buildyourguitar.com/resources/fretcalc/index.htm

I believe the rod in the second link (the cheaper one) is single-action. I have the double-action in a guitar and it works great.

Wow, fantastic shape. I love the headstock even more. It's giving me "old european" vibes, like pictures of old nylon-strung guitars. A very "artsy" take on Fender styling.

Thanks man... I'm quite familiar with tube amps. I'm thinking the amp is cathode-biased; I seem to remember seeing 36w on a data sheet for push-pull cathode biased setup. Perry, it's too bad you don't like building them. You had a cash cow going there! And for what it's worth... all amps are pretty similar. There's only so many ways to bias a 12AX7.

I would just test the pickup first. If there's no sound or it's thin, it's probably messed up. I can't tell in your picture... but perhaps it's just wax that broke up? If you don't want to bother soldering it together, just measure the resistance with a multimeter. If it's close to spec, it's fine.